


In Your Dreams

by Destielshipper4Cas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Bottom Castiel (Supernatural), Bottom Castiel/Top Dean Winchester, Dreamwalker Castiel (Supernatural), Dreamwalking, Getting Together, Hunter Dean, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Strangers to Lovers, Top Dean Winchester, Witch Castiel, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-06-22
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:27:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23233966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destielshipper4Cas/pseuds/Destielshipper4Cas
Summary: Castiel has helped countless people fall asleep. Of course, he isn’t supposed to dreamwalk and interact with his charges in their dreams, but then he meets Dean... and innocent meetings in Dean’s dreamscape turn into more.But that’s okay because Dean won’t remember any of this when he wakes up anyway… or will he?
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 189
Kudos: 993





	1. Chapter 1

As a witch, Castiel had had a lot of different jobs over the years: potion brewer, weather stabilizer, interpreter for fae languages, memory eraser for the KUS (Keep Us Secret) agency. He had even tried it the human way and worked at a Gas-N-Sip for a while.

Unfortunately, all of those jobs required interacting with people, and Castiel’s people skills were ‘rusty’ to say the least.

So, when his sister Anael told him about the opening as a sandman, where interacting with people was strictly forbidden, Cas jumped at the chance and promptly got the job, which seemed like the perfect fit for him.

He had been assigned to a big city, which meant that he was helping a lot of people fall asleep.

Until one day, when he had been caught trying to help a little boy who had lost his parents and was having horrible nightmares because of it. See, sandmen weren’t supposed to interfere at all. Their only job was making their sleepless charges fall asleep—that was all. They definitely weren’t allowed to take away nightmares because ‘nightmares are important for humans’ according to the handbook.

That’s how he had ended up in Lebanon.

“Lots of sleepless people in Lebanon,” his boss, Zachariah, had said. But Castiel knew the real reason: it was a much smaller area of less priority.

The sandman who had worked Lebanon before him—a sandwoman, actually, by the name of Rowena—gave him some pointers, the main one being that there were two hunters she had just skipped.

Sandmen were well within their rights to ignore hunters, as they tended to hunt all kinds of supernatural beings, which meant that sandmen themselves could end up on their list of ‘monsters’ they wanted to kill.

Cas thought about Rowena’s warning, but decided to stop by ‘Sam and Dean Winchester’s’ bunker after he was finished with his other charges. Of course, humans _could_ fall asleep on their own—it just took them longer or they might not get a lot of sleep. If the Winchesters turned out to be some vicious hunters, Cas didn’t need to feel guilty if he crossed them off his nightly route.

By the time he got to the bunker, Sam had already fallen asleep without his help. That wasn’t surprising seeing as Sam Winchester hadn’t been marked as someone who had trouble sleeping on Cas’ list.

Dean, who did have a red dot next to his name, was in the kitchen for a midnight snack, whistling to himself, completely oblivious to Castiel’s presence as humans always were when he cloaked himself.

Normally, this time of night, humans with sleeping problems would be tossing and turning in bed, waiting restlessly for Cas to do his magic and send them off to dreamland. Instead, Cas was stumped as he watched Dean sit down and dig into his burger—and what kind of a midnight snack was a burger, anyway? He should be drinking warm milk or chamomile tea.

Cas knew that he wasn’t allowed to make people fall asleep when they were, say, behind the wheel or in a bar or at a party. He assumed kitchens were among the locations where he shouldn’t send humans off to sleep, so, he really had no choice but to wait around for Dean to go to bed. Heaving a sigh Dean wouldn’t be able to hear, he sat down opposite the hunter and watched him eat.

Half an hour later, he had followed Dean around the bunker doing laundry, taking a shower (he had stayed outside the room for that, of course) and checking some machine in what appeared to be some sort of control room.

Finally, when Cas was about to just do his thing and make Dean fall asleep mid-step, the hunter went into his room to watch some TV. This was the perfect opportunity. Granted, Dean still hadn’t changed into his pajamas, but he _was_ finally on his bed, which was good enough for Cas.

He gently put a finger to Dean’s forehead, mumbled a few words, and the next second, his last charge of the night was finally sound asleep as well.

Taking on a corporeal form, Cas turned off the TV and put the blanket over Dean to ensure a better sleeping experience. Then, he quickly and silently left. First day on the new job and he was already bending the ‘no interference’ rule. He really should be more careful if he didn’t want to get fired…

⁂

“I’m telling you, we have some sort of spirit or… something that’s sneaking around in here at night,” Dean insisted.

He could see from Sam’s bitchface that his brother thought he was just being paranoid, but Dean had clearly felt a presence the night before. None of their instruments had picked up on anything, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been there.

“Because you’ve slept for more than four hours for once?” Sam repeated, clearly disbelieving.

It _was_ the first time in a long time that Dean had had more than his usual four hours, but that was probably just a side effect.

“I don’t just sleep through the night,” he explained. “And I don’t fall asleep in the middle of an episode of _Doctor Sexy_! Maybe the spirit wanted me out of the way for whatever its plan was.”

“And what was its evil plan?” Sam asked. “Nothing’s missing, everything’s working fine. It clearly didn’t intend to kill or harm us in any way…”

“I’m gonna hunt this thing down with or without your help,” Dean declared and then went about his day with a lot more energy after a good night’s sleep.

Since Sam was a lot better at the whole research thing but was too stubborn to admit that Dean was right, Dean wasn’t really successful at finding out what kind of a monster he was dealing with here. A Djinn was out of the question since it wouldn’t just let Dean wake up and it wasn’t like Dean’s dreams had been messed with anyway.

That only left one course of action: he drank lots of coffee that evening to prepare himself and stay up to catch whoever was after them red-handed. No way would he fall asleep again and let the intruder just stroll around the bunker unsupervised.


	2. Chapter 2

Something about Dean was… intriguing. Maybe it was the danger of interacting with a hunter—hunters tended to dislike witches on principle. Or maybe it was the way Dean had looked when he had finally fallen asleep, worries forgotten and returning to a state of innocent vulnerability.

Whatever it was, Cas had made his decision: he wouldn’t just skip the hunter on his route, and so he was back at the bunker the next night.

Just like the night before, Dean didn’t seem to even think about going to bed, even though Cas had already taken care of all his other charges, which meant that it was rather late.

Dean was sitting at the map table in the control room, an EMF meter in one hand and an iron bar in the other, which gave Cas pause for a second. Was this bunker haunted? Was that why Dean had problems sleeping? Why wasn’t his brother helping him in that case?

Cas sat down next to Dean and waited with him for some ghost to arrive. He knew he shouldn’t interfere, but if something attacked Dean, he was probably allowed to make an exception and help if Dean couldn’t handle it himself.

Only no ghost made an appearance, which meant that they waited until the night was almost over.

Cas didn’t really mind—witches didn’t experience time the same way humans did, so he had no problem sitting there and watching Dean for hours on end. (He did get lost counting his freckles, though.)

Dean, on the other hand, was only human, and finally nodded off even without Cas’ help, his head resting on his forearms, EMF meter and iron bar still clutched loosely in his hands.

Well, if he just went ahead and fell asleep right here—then Cas could have done that. His position didn’t look comfortable, though. He’d have a stiff neck when he woke up.

It was probably somewhere in Cas’ job description that he should make sure his charges were comfortable, so Cas decided to relocate Dean to his bed using a simple levitation spell.

Once Dean was safely tucked away in his bed, a strange urge overcame Cas to watch over him. He sat down on the edge of Dean’s bed and watched the hunter shift in his sleep.

“What are you dreaming about?” he mumbled to himself.

Human dreams had always fascinated him. As a witch, he didn’t require a lot of sleep, and when he did sleep, it was a dreamless sleep.

No matter how curious he was, though, he wasn’t allowed to dreamwalk, so after a while, Cas got up, adding another protection spell to the bunker’s wards because frankly, it was way too easy to bypass the existing ones.

Then, content that Dean was safe, he left, already looking forward to returning the next night.

⁂

During the next few nights, Cas watched Dean set traps for all kinds of supernatural beings. Cas didn’t feel the presence of anyone but Sam and Dean in the bunker, though, so he assumed it was normal hunter paranoia that made Dean act that way.

Or maybe Dean was bored at night since he wasn’t spending the time asleep in his bed as he was supposed to.

That’s why Cas got into the habit of making Dean fall asleep even when he wasn’t in bed. Since Dean had fallen asleep at the map table before when he had been exhausted enough, Cas could just speed up the process.

Then, one night when Cas was watching over Dean and Dean was mumbling in his sleep, the curiosity got the better of him.

Cas had clocked out for the night hours ago, so it wasn’t like Zachariah could fire him for taking a quick peek. He wasn’t even on the job. And he would be in and out really quickly.

They were in a forest. Apparently, Dean was dreaming about a hunt. It wasn’t really a nightmare because it was Dean who was running after the monster, not the other way around.

Cas quickly left the dream.

There. His curiosity was appeased. Nothing had happened, Dean wouldn’t even have seen him anyway, not unless Cas wanted to be seen.

It had been kind of a rush. Cas hadn’t been inside anyone’s dream in a long time.

He shouldn’t let it happen again, though. Witches really weren’t supposed to snoop around someone’s dream.

With one last glance at Dean, he left for the night.

⁂

Dean stopped running and turned around, sure he had seen something out of the corner of his eye. But there was nothing there and when he turned back around to chase the werewolf, it had vanished and a huge maze had appeared where the forest had been.

When he woke up, the dream had long been forgotten.

Yet again, he couldn’t remember how he had ended up in his bed. That probably meant that he could cross Succubi and Incubi off his list since he’d set traps for them the night before. It had been a long shot anyway, just because he’d had a few sexy dreams, which was really nothing new.

Next on his list: an Alû. At this point, he’d go for anything that attacked at night or in dreams.

⁂

Dean Winchester’s dreams were fascinating, Cas just couldn’t stay away. When he wasn’t dreaming about hunting, Dean was dreaming about fishing, no one else around him, the scenery peaceful. Dean would do nothing, just sit there and relax.

Other times, he had nightmares about losing his brother. These were the times Cas had a really hard time not interfering and taking the nightmares away. But even though he only visited Dean anymore when he was off the clock, he didn’t want to risk it. He really didn’t want to get transferred away from Lebanon. It was a nice town after all.

Then there were the dreams of a very… human nature that had Dean squirming in his sleep for a different reason. Some were about beautiful women. Others about handsome men.

Cas didn’t know much about dream etiquette, but he knew to leave Dean alone when he was having such a dream.

It was when Cas had just inadvertently entered one of those dreams—they were in some sort of club with half-dressed men dancing on stage—when Dean turned around and looked right at him.

Cas threw a look over his own shoulder because surely, Dean had to be looking at someone else. He wasn’t even supposed to _see_ Cas. But there was no one behind him, and when Cas turned back around, Dean had taken a few steps closer and was right in front of him, looking him up and down.

“Yeah, okay,” he said and started taking off Cas’ trench coat.

Cas was too stunned to do anything for a moment. Only when Dean had gotten rid of the trench coat and was starting to make quick work of his shirt underneath did Cas realize what was going on here.

He was out of Dean’s dream and back in his own bedroom in the blink of an eye.

His heart was racing and he started pacing up and down. He had no idea what had just happened. Dean shouldn’t have been able to see him, much less touch him.

He should never have started spying on Dean’s dreams in the first place. He was playing with fire here.

He would just stop. No real harm had been done yet. He could just never enter Dean’s dreams again and everything would be fine.

That’s when he realized that he had forgotten his trench coat in Dean’s dream. Forgetting things inside someone’s mind could be dangerous. There was no way around it—he’d have to enter Dean’s dreams one more time to retrieve his trench coat.

He just hoped he could sneak in and out of Dean’s dreams without the hunter spotting him again.


	3. Chapter 3

It started when he was brushing his teeth in the morning: He thought he saw something in the mirror. Or rather, someone who seemed familiar, but when he turned around, there was no one there.

He kept getting glimpses of that stranger in the trench coat throughout the day, but it was more like the remnant of a dream, something he couldn’t quite reach for.

“There! Didn’t you see?” he asked Sam when he had turned off the TV in the Dean cave and there had definitely been trench coat guy in the reflection of the screen if only for a second.

Sam looked at him, a frown on his face. “Are you sure you aren’t just sleep deprived?”

“I’ve never had this much sleep in my entire life!”

He’d had way more sleep than his four hours a day as of late.

“Okay. Then let’s hit the books, maybe we can find some trench coat wearing monster.”

At least Sam had finally started to believe there was something going on, even though he himself hadn’t seen or heard anything.

Unfortunately, having Sam’s help didn’t get him any further than he had gotten by himself. The fact that he had no idea what this supernatural being was even doing apart from appearing in mirrors for a second before vanishing wasn’t helpful either.

Dean had to admit that so far, it hadn’t attacked or tried to do anything to harm him.

That night, he was all out of ideas for which supernatural being he should set traps. So, they decided to have Sam bunk with him, on a mattress next to Dean’s bed.

Since the thing was clearly after Dean, maybe Sam could help him stay awake to catch it.

⁂

When Cas arrived in Dean’s bedroom, his brother was there and they were playing some sort of card game. Cas watched them for a while, unsure of why they were awake that late and if he should just send them both to sleep.

He needed Dean to be asleep so that he could get his trench coat back, so when the Winchester brothers were still awake at three o’clock in the morning, he decided to make them both fall asleep.

Mission accomplished, he carefully entered Dean’s dream, concentrating on staying hidden.

They were in what looked like a Western saloon. Dean was sitting at the bar, wearing a cowboy outfit and nursing some drink. Cas realized that he was wearing a cowboy hat himself, which was strange because he was just an impartial observer of the dream. He wasn’t supposed to be a real part of it.

He looked around for the trench coat, but couldn’t see it anywhere.

“You vanished rather quickly the other night,” Dean said and then turned around on the stool and looked right at Cas once again.

How did he keep doing that?! And what was more curious: He remembered that they had met before. Occasionally, dreams might be connected, but it was rather unusual for humans to remember another dream inside a dream.

Cas considered popping out on him again, but he hadn’t gotten his trench coat yet and it was paramount that he got it back.

Interacting with a human in his charge: not a good idea and on top of that, a fireable offense. Interacting with a _hunter_ : definitely the worst idea ever.

Still, Cas found himself replying, “I had business to attend elsewhere. But I came back for my coat. You wouldn’t happen to know where it is?”

He was doing it; he was talking to Dean Winchester. He so shouldn’t be talking to a hunter in his dreams! But how else was he supposed to find his coat?

They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Dean got up and came over.

Cas almost expected a repeat performance from last night with Dean undressing him even further, but instead, Dean said, “Hey, about the other night… I thought you were… you know. On board. Didn’t mean to scare you away.”

“You didn’t scare me. I just didn’t expect…” There was no way for him to finish that thought without disclosing too much, so Cas just trailed off.

Dean nodded to indicate he understood (which he probably didn’t) and then held out his hand. “Dean.”

Cas swallowed the automatic reply of ‘I know,’ and instead shook the hand and said, “Castiel,” only realizing too late that maybe, he shouldn’t have told Dean that.

He cleared his throat and quickly got back on track, “Where is my coat?

He needed to put an end to this. Dreams that lasted too long might leave some trace behind. Dean couldn’t remember any of this when he woke up!

“I didn’t take it,” Dean said. “You must have left it in that club. Want me to give you a ride?”

There might have been some hidden meaning Dean tried to convey with his eyebrows, but since Cas didn’t have time to decode human body language, he simply took him up on the offer and followed him outside… Where Dean stopped in front of a black horse, proceeded to mount it and then held out his hand for Cas to follow suit.

“I doubt that that’s the fastest way,” Cas said.

Dean patted the horse’s shoulder and said, “Don’t listen to him, Baby.” To Cas, he said, “She’s the fastest horse there is.”

A moment later, Cas was sitting behind Dean, arms wrapped around his waist and holding on for dear life. He was so much better at blinking in and out of existence as a means of getting from point A to point B.

“You can relax,” Dean said over his shoulder. “I ain’t gonna let you fall.”

Cas tried to stop gripping Dean too tightly, but then the horse was going faster and he was right back to clutching at him. No one would believe him that he had hugged a hunter, even if it was just from behind to keep from falling off a horse.

After a while, he did relax and found that holding on to Dean while not afraid for his life was actually kind of nice.

Dean distracted him and soon they were deep in a discussion about djinns. (Apparently, Dean had had some run-ins with them and since Cas had once ended up accidentally married to one, he could understand his frustration.)

That’s why Cas had completely lost time and realized that they were still just riding through nature together, no club in sight. Whatever had happened to his plan of getting out of Dean’s mind as quickly as possible? For all he knew, Dean might wake up any second.

“I don’t want to insult your ‘Baby’ and I admit that she really is very fast. But I think I know a faster way to get back to the club,” he said and then told Dean to close his eyes and think of the club.

It might be dangerous, teaching Dean how to do that, but he wouldn’t come back to visit Dean in his dreams anyway. All he had to do was get out of here with the trench coat and with Dean none the wiser.

The scenery around them changed and suddenly, they were back at the club sans horse, which meant that they both went tumbling to the floor.

Well, the landing still needed some work, but apart from that, Dean had done well transporting them here.

“Okay, that? Was awesome!” Dean declared while getting off Cas and helping him up.

He closed his eyes and Cas only had enough time to say, “No no no!” but the next second, they were at Dean’s favorite dream fishing lake.

Cas sighed. He knew he shouldn’t have taught Dean how to dream hop. “Dean… my coat!” he reminded him.

“One track mind much?” Dean said with an exaggerated eye-roll. Then he closed his eyes, a concentrated frown on his face, but instead of jumping back to the club, Cas was suddenly wearing his trench coat again.

Finally. Mission completed. He had gotten what he had come for. For some reason, it was difficult to say goodbye, though. He realized with a start that he had enjoyed the time they had spent together.

“Thank you,” he said, reluctant to just pop out of Dean’s dream.

Dean smiled at him, carefree, and said, “Happy to help.” Then, he added, “Check this out!” And the next second, he was holding a fishing rod in his hands. “Want one too?” he asked, but Cas knew that it was time for him to go—had, in fact, long been time for him to go.

So, he just shook his head and said, “Goodbye Dean. It was nice meeting you.”

Back home, he found that he was still wearing the cowboy hat.

Why did this keep happening to him?


	4. Chapter 4

Falling asleep exactly at the same time when they hadn’t even been close to falling asleep was the last clue to convince Sam that something was definitely going on here.

Dean didn’t see trench coat guy anymore, but something was nagging at him in the back of his mind.

Sam was the one who finally came up with the theory that the midnight visitor might have dream walking abilities, so they came up with a way to trap it inside Dean’s dreams. The solution was simple: Have Dean drink some disgusting concoction that would help him take control of his dreams. It might take a while for the concoction to take effect, but it was better than nothing.

Add a little spell and voilà…

All they had to do was wait.

⁂

Cas had been tempted to keep the cowboy hat—it wasn’t like Dean didn’t have lots of others in his mind as the dreamscape in the saloon had proven.

Still, it was as good an excuse as any to go back one last time. Help Dean fall asleep if he needed any help, give back what he had involuntarily taken, and then be gone again. For good.

No lingering, no watching him sleep, no dream walking.

That was the plan.

Sam was there again, but Dean was already asleep, so Cas simply put Sam to sleep as well with a wave of his hand.

There was a frown on Dean’s face that Cas didn’t quite like and so he decided to quickly make sure that everything was okay in Dean’s dreams.

At first, he thought it hadn’t worked. He was still in Dean’s room. But Sam had vanished and Dean was sitting on his bed wide-awake. That’s when Cas realized that he already was in Dean’s dream.

“Hey Cas,” Dean greeted him, and Cas wasn’t even surprised anymore that he had retained the memory of meeting him and learning his name.

Cas immediately felt the weird dream energy. Dean didn’t seem happy. This wasn’t a very nice dream, but it didn’t look like a nightmare, either.

He greeted Dean back and put the cowboy hat he was holding in his hands on Dean’s desk. The hunter didn’t even seem curious about the fact that he had brought his hat back.

“Is everything okay?” Cas asked as he sat down next to Dean.

“I don’t know. I think there was something I was supposed to remember.” Dean massaged his forehead. Then he looked up. “I think I’m waiting for someone?”

“Oh.” Of course, Dean would have more important dream appointments to keep. Still, he offered, “I could keep you company,” even though the plan had been to leave as soon as possible. But Dean seemed sad that he had to wait here all alone and so keeping him company seemed like the decent thing to do.

“Great!” Dean smiled at him. “So… Is this one of those dreams?”

Cas squinted at Dean, trying to make sense of that sentence. He didn’t have to ask, though, because Dean went right on, “I mean, I know you’ve turned me down before, but then you keep showing up in my bed…”

“This is the first time I’m on your bed,” Cas interrupted him. “And I didn’t show up here, I showed up over there.”

“Whatever. I figure, there’s one thing we could be doing on my bed to pass the time.” Dean raised his eyebrows, and there was something in his look that seemed like…

“Is that a flirtation?”

“Well, if you gotta ask, I probably didn’t do it right. Let me try again.” Dean scooted closer a bit, put his hand on Cas’ thigh, and leaned in to whisper, “Hey there, handsome. Wanna make this a dirty dream?”

And even though Cas was very bad at picking up on these kinds of things—he was pretty sure that that was, in fact, a flirtation.

He had, up to this point, broken almost all the rules, starting with staying away from hunters and not interacting with charges… so what was one more rule, especially since some part of him really yearned for some contact. Well, dream contact, but still.

The first press of lips against his own was tentative, but once he reciprocated, Dean’s confidence grew and he took charge, pushing Cas down to lie back on his bed before he climbed on top of him and—where did their clothes go?

Oh. He really shouldn’t have taught Dean how to manipulate dreams. Or maybe he should have. After all, skin-on-skin contact felt _great_.

He had never had dream sex before, but he quickly found out that it had its perks. A concentrated frown on Dean’s face and the next second, his asshole was well-lubricated and Dean’s dick was making its way inside.

Dean was slamming his eyes shut, biting his lower lip, but he couldn’t suppress a moan when his hips jerked and he pushed the rest of the way inside. He looked so beautiful towering above him that Cas couldn’t resist pulling him down for another kiss.

Kissing Dean felt… right. It gave him all kinds of nice tingles deep in his belly and felt almost as good as Dean’s cock in his ass, pulling out and fucking back in.

When Dean wrapped a hand around his shaft and gave it a little squeeze, Cas felt his stomach muscles clench. He wanted Dean to feel as good as he did and so when the orgasm overcame him, he squeezed Dean’s cock that was fucking him through his orgasm until Dean lost control and shot his load into his ass.

Afterwards, Cas found another perk of dream sex: no clean up necessary. They could go straight to cuddle time.

Even though he had already ejaculated, the tingling was still there. Every touch from Dean seemed to send electricity through his body.

Unfortunately, this was just a dream. And like every dream, this one had to end eventually.

When they were magically wearing clothes again, the scenery around them shifted. They were still in Dean’s room, but the room somehow became sharper, more details added, _realer_.

“Wait—I remember!” Dean suddenly said and jumped up from the bed. “I’m supposed to trap some dream walking entity who has been breaking into the bunker. We performed this spell to put up walls inside my mind…”

Uh-oh.

“What do you mean, trap…?” Cas asked, getting up from the bed himself.

Now that it had been pointed out, he could suddenly see the sigils on the walls that would make it impossible for him to leave. Just to make sure, he tried to zap himself out of Dean’s dream, but no luck. He really was stuck here.

“It worked,” Dean went on, oblivious to Cas’ silent freak out. “I’m starting to remember my real life. Now all we have to do is wait for that son of a bitch to show his face.”

“Uhm… yes! That’s… a good plan,” Cas agreed, trying to keep his voice level as he was looking around the room for a way out. “You seem to have things under control here, so I’ll just…” He went over to the door, intending to leave the old-fashioned way, but the door wouldn’t open.

“Where are you going?” Dean asked. “I could use some help overpowering that dream walker and throwing him into the dungeon.”

Cas gulped. Rowena might have been right all along. No good could come from interacting with hunters. Maybe he should have heeded her warning.

The downside of dream sex? It was as if it had never happened. Normally, he would still feel it in his ass. A reminder of what they had done. But they hadn’t done it, not in reality.

Still, hunter or not, Dean was a reasonable human, so he said, “Well, you don’t even know that dream walker, right? Maybe he is just looking out for you. You know, watching over you while you’re asleep?”

Dean narrowed his eyes, clearly not believing that to be a likely scenario, so Cas quickly went on, “He might just want you to get a good night’s sleep, preferably without nightmares. Or maybe he likes the company. Because it’s getting lonely at night when all he has to do is make humans fall asleep without ever talking to them or seeing their dreams. Maybe your dreams fascinate him and he broke a few rules for you so that he could get a glimpse of them.” He cleared his throat when he realized that Dean was giving him a weird look. “I’m just guessing here of course,” he finished lamely.

Dean was still staring at him, now a frown on his face that didn’t bode well for Cas. When the hunter didn’t say anything, he felt it safest to backpedal a bit, so he said, “Or, you know, it could be a vicious monster and we should lock him up in the dungeon. I like your plan better.”

“ _You_ ’re the dream walker?” Dean finally said.

Now that his dream mind was syncing up with his waking mind, it had really only been a matter of time before Cas’ cover would have been blown anyway.

“I brought back your hat?” Cas said as a peace offering, motioning towards the hat on the desk while taking a cautious step backwards.

Dean only rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to hurt you, Cas. Just… what are you? I’ve been trying to ward off all kinds of supernatural beings.”

“Just a simple witch.” Cas shrugged his shoulders, a bit self-conscious. Nothing impressive, just a witch who was so lonely he ended up dream-stalking a hunter. And having dream sex with him.

Dean wasn’t convinced, though. “I tried warding off witches.”

“Evil witches,” Cas corrected him. “Good witches can still enter.”

Dean heaved a sigh and then went over to the wall and wiped away part of the sigils. “You’re not a prisoner here. But I’d like you to…”

⁂

“…stay,” Dean finished, but Cas had already blinked out of existence as if he had never been here.

Later, back in the real world, when Sam asked if the trap had worked, Dean just waved him off and muttered something about how they had been mistaken and there was no monster after all.

⁂

Cas had been good. It hadn’t been easy. Ever since he had been zapped out of Dean’s dream by Zachariah himself, he had desperately wished he could go back to Dean.

But he had been reamed out for breaking dream protocol, had almost been relocated _again_ and awake Dean wouldn’t remember their dream interactions anyway. So, he really had no way of getting in contact, now that Zachariah was keeping a close eye on him. He hadn’t cared much about Cas’ excuse that he had clocked out before visiting Dean. All in all, he was on very thin ice, and still, he preferred working in Lebanon just because it meant he could feel closer to Dean.

It had been a few months since… all of it had gone down, and it was Cas’ night off. Usually, he’d spend that time alone at home, but Anael had convinced him to go out for a drink, try to make connections since he had yet to make some friends in his new hometown.

And while, yes, the reason Cas had gotten this job in the first place was his aversion to small talk and making friends, a little bit of company did sound like a good idea, and so he followed his sister’s advice.

It would just be his luck that the first time he went out to a bar after weeks of only leaving his home for his nightly rounds of sandman duties, none other than Dean Winchester himself was sitting there at the bar, together with his brother.

Cas sighed and was about to turn around—he really wasn’t feeling like pretending he didn’t know Dean and watching him hit on someone else—when, as if he had felt his presence, Dean turned around and looked right at him, just like he had done that first time they had met in his dreams.

Cas’ heart started pounding in his chest, expecting Dean to turn back around or continue to let his eyes wander. Instead, as he kept his eyes fixed on Cas, a smile began spreading across his face.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who commented on this fic. I hope to hear from you one last time in the comment section. ❤️
> 
> And if you want to support me another way, reblogging the link on tumblr would be awesome. **[Here's the link to the tumblr post](https://destielshipper4cas.tumblr.com/post/621644465207181312/in-your-dreams-finished-rating-explicit-tags)**.


End file.
